Nicki Minaj Addresses Cardi B Altercation On Queen Radio
One of Nicki Minaj’s celebrity feuds was in the spotlight over the weekend, which can only mean one thing: Today we got a new episode of Queen Radio, the Beats 1 broadcast on which Minaj holds court. She’s previously used this venue to go off on the likes of Travis Scott and Spotify, but this time the rivalry in question was Minaj’s long-simmering beef with Cardi B, which resulted in a physical altercation at New York Fashion Week this past Friday. It sounds like it was a real entourage-on-entourage rumble á la Anchorman, with Cardi throwing her shoe at Minaj and receiving a bruise over her left eye courtesy of someone in Minaj’s entourage.
Ever since Cardi became a people’s champion of sorts with last year’s #1 hit “Bodak Yellow,” there has been an unspoken conflict between the two rappers, one that only intensified when the success of Cardi’s debut album Invasion Of Privacy proved she’d be lingering on the pop-rap A-list for quite some time. When Minaj launched her Queen rollout the week after Cardi’s album dropped, they were in the midst of an unspoken cold war even though they’d appeared together on the Migos hit “MotorSport.” But the war seemed pretty heated as of Friday. After the fight, Cardi posted a game-on message to Instagram indicating that Minaj’s comments about her parenting were the final straw: “But when you mention my child, you choose to like comments about me as a mother, make comments about my abilities to take care of daughter is when all bets are fuckin off!!”
On today’s Queen Radio, Minaj expressed her embarrassment to be involved in a fight at such a fancy event disputed the notion that she had ever spoken about Cardi’s child. As transcribed by Pitchfork, she said:
The other night I was part of something so mortifying and so humiliating to go through in front of a bunch upper echelon… people who have their life together. The way they passed by looking at this disgusting commotion. I was mortified. I was in a Gaultier gown — off the motherfucking runway — and I could not believe how humiliated it all felt because we… made ourselves look — and I’ma get back, but before I go, I wanna say that I would never discuss anyone’s child. And it’s so sad for someone to pin that on me because I’m the bad guy and they’re gonna believe them…. I would never talk about someone’s child or parenting…. It’s so crazy to me that people always need to make Onika the bad guy. If you’re right in whatever you’re doing… just speak your truth.
I just want people to know that Onika Tanya Maraj has never, will never… speak ill on anyone’s child. I am not a clown. That’s clown shit. The other thing is to tell the world something just because you look fucking dumb. You knew that when that footage came out, you was about to look fucking dumb, so your publicist—also looking fucking dumb…—they hurried up and put out a statement. I’m such a ill-ass bitch I didn’t even feel the need to defend myself that night.
I just want everybody to marinate for two minutes…. But we did hear this woman say that nothing’s off limits… because she has built her career off of sympathy and payola.
She also addressed Cardi’s behavior following the birth of her daughter, Kulture:
The world gave you a blessing, of a beautiful bundle of joy, and the only thing on your mind after you [gave birth] was to attack people and to stop their bags…. And you wanna let your publicist write something about stopping bags? Do you know what it is to sit in your room for hours and days at a time writing raps? You came into my fucking culture! I never had a DJ to play my fucking songs.
Also:
This is about, get this woman some fucking help. This woman is at the best stage of her career and she’s throwing bottles and shoes?… You niggas don’t care until somebody’s fucking dead…. This shit ain’t fucking funny. You put your hands on certain people, you gonna die. Period.
Hopefully this rivalry can enjoy some of that peacemaking that’s been happening in prominent rap feuds recently.